And she does go for it. The tears pour from her eyes and an awful moan rises from her throat and her body begins to tremble as though she were cold. She has lost her control, but she doesn’t care. Sid won’t mind. He had lost control, too, and she had seen him cry. They’re the regulars. Except he won’t be there in the alcove any more. His loss is already complete.
“I should be comforting you,” she says in a thick voice. “I’m so sorry.”
“We’re comforting each other.” He takes out another tissue and dabs at her face and nose. Then he puts his arm around her and pulls her against his chest and rubs her shoulder, warming her. Yes, it is comforting, she thinks, to be held by this man who understands because he’s been there, too.
Slowly her crying subsides, but she doesn’t move, and they don’t speak. He strokes her forehead and her cheeks, and his finger traces her collarbone and moves down to the v of her robe. She smells the soap he had used when he showered and she feels her hair floating in his quickening breath.
“Jesus Christ,” he says, jumping up. “What the hell am I doing?”
She knows what he’s doing, and she doesn’t want him to stop. It had been so long since anyone had touched her. She feels her own response spreading through her body, and she pulls him back to the sofa. Oh, she knows it’s funny, odd, maybe wicked, two old people, strangers, beginning to make love on the sofa. But she’s absolutely sure Henry and Louise would want them to comfort each other in their grief.
About the Author
Nancy Huddleston Packer is Professor Emerita of English and former Director of the Creative Writing Program at Stanford University. Her stories have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies, and she is the author of four earlier collections of stories: Small Moments, In My Father’s House The Women Who Walk, and Jealous-Hearted Me
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